India’s SAIL and JCIL to invest $692 million in electrical steel production

Indian state-owned steelmaker Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) and technology firm John Cockerill India (JCIL) plan to invest about INR60 billion ($692 million) to set up a plant to produce cold-rolled granular and cold-rolled non-oriented electrical steel. This is reported by Manufacturing Today India.

The new project is scheduled to be completed in 2027-2029, with a target production volume of 1.5 million tons per year.

The raw material for production will be hot-rolled coils supplied by SAIL, and the new unit can be built at any of the steelmaker’s plants.

SAIL also intends to install an electric arc furnace to produce green steel.

The integration is based on a Memorandum of Understanding signed by the companies in November 2022. It envisages work on clean steel technologies and innovations in carbon steel, environmentally friendly and silicon steel. Both companies share a common goal of seeking new cost-effective solutions that will transform India’s steel industry.

SAIL and Australian mining company BHP will cooperate to support the decarbonization of steel production. The parties are already exploring a number of areas of work to support the potential decarbonization of the Indian steelmaker’s blast furnace steel plants, starting with a scoping study to assess various strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This work will consider the role of alternative reductants for the blast furnace (hydrogen, biogas).